Further Reading — Chapter 14: Psychological Development Across the Lifespan

Annotated resources for deeper exploration. Items marked with ★ are especially recommended as starting points.

Foundational Books and Papers

★ Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton. The original statement of Erikson's eight psychosocial stages — still one of the most important books in the field. Erikson writes with a literary quality unusual in psychology: humane, historically informed, and clinically grounded. The book is not just theory; it is an account of how cultural context shapes psychological development. The stages framework is presented more fully here than in most secondary sources.

★ Bowlby, J. (1969–1980). Attachment and Loss (Volumes 1–3). Basic Books. The foundational trilogy of attachment theory — evolutionary, ethological, and clinically informed. Volume 1 (Attachment), Volume 2 (Separation), and Volume 3 (Loss) together constitute the most important theoretical framework in developmental psychology. Volume 1 is the most directly relevant to this chapter; Volumes 2 and 3 are relevant to Chapter 15 and Chapter 34.

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum. The foundational study introducing the Strange Situation procedure and the original three attachment patterns (secure, anxious, avoidant). Technical but readable. The methodological contribution — a standardized procedure for observing attachment behavior — is as important as the findings.

On Lifespan Development

★ Vaillant, G. E. (2012). Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. Harvard University Press. The most complete account of the Grant Study's findings — an 80-year longitudinal study of 268 Harvard men from the 1930s through the 2000s. Vaillant's central finding: the quality of relationships, far more than any other variable, predicts late-life flourishing. Readable, honest about the study's limitations (all male, all Harvard, largely white), and rich in individual stories. The most important longitudinal study of adult development.

Levinson, D. J. (1978). The Seasons of a Man's Life. Knopf. Levinson's developmental model of adult life — built on in-depth interviews with forty men across different occupations. Identifies the alternating periods of structure-building and structure-changing that characterize adult development. Accessible and influential. Read alongside more recent work that extends the framework to women and accounts for more diverse life paths.

★ Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties. Oxford University Press. The foundational text on emerging adulthood — Arnett's full statement of the theory, the evidence, and the cultural contexts in which it is more or less applicable. Accessible to non-specialists and practically important for understanding the developmental period that many contemporary young adults are navigating.

On Cognitive Development

Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. Basic Books. One of Piaget's most accessible books — focused on the infant's construction of the concept of a permanent, independent physical world. The sensorimotor period in rich detail. Piaget's observational acuity is remarkable. Read for the quality of the observations as much as for the theory.

Carey, S. (2009). The Origin of Concepts. Oxford University Press. A contemporary cognitive developmental account of concept formation — more up-to-date than Piaget and integrates decades of subsequent research. Shows that infants are more sophisticated than Piaget recognized, while also confirming the importance of qualitative reorganization in development.

On Identity Development

Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551–558. The foundational paper introducing the four identity statuses as an operationalization of Erikson's identity concept. Accessible and important. The methodology (structured interviews about exploration and commitment in vocational and ideological domains) is simple, elegant, and extensively validated.

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. The landmark paper introducing emerging adulthood as a distinct developmental period. Accessible, well-argued, and still the starting point for the field. Read alongside critiques (Côté, Hendry) for a balanced picture.

On Adult Development

★ Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Harvard University Press. Kegan's account of adult cognitive and developmental complexity — extending his stage model to the demands of contemporary social and professional life. Argues that modern life routinely makes demands that exceed the developmental capacity of the socialized mind, requiring the self-authoring capacity that most people do not fully develop. Substantive and important. More accessible than his earlier The Evolving Self (1982).

Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2009). Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. Harvard Business Review Press. A practical application of Kegan's developmental theory to adult change and development. The "immunity to change" model — identifying hidden competing commitments that prevent desired change — is among the most practically useful frameworks for understanding why capable people fail to change things they genuinely want to change. Accessible and highly applicable.

On Aging and Later Life

★ Carstensen, L. L. (2011). A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Broadway Books. An accessible and evidence-based account of psychological aging by the leading researcher of socioemotional selectivity theory. Addresses the counterintuitive finding that older adults report higher emotional wellbeing than younger adults, the conditions that support successful aging, and the implications of increased longevity for how we structure adult life. Excellent starting point.

Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54(3), 165–181. The foundational theoretical paper introducing socioemotional selectivity theory — how perceived time horizon organizes social goals and motivation across the lifespan. Accessible, elegant, and empirically well-supported.

Erikson, E. H., Erikson, J. M., & Kivnick, H. Q. (1986). Vital Involvement in Old Age. W. W. Norton. Erikson's own examination of late-life development — based on interviews with elderly participants from his original longitudinal research. A rich, qualitative account of what integrity and despair look like in actual lives. More accessible and humanistic than theoretical treatments of the eighth stage.

On Adversity and Resilience in Development

Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. The original ACEs paper — establishing the dose-response relationship between adverse childhood experiences and adult health outcomes across a large sample. Foundational and sobering. The finding that early adversity affects adult health through behavioral, psychological, and biological pathways is among the most important in developmental health research.

Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. (2001). Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience, and Recovery. Cornell University Press. The final volume in Werner and Smith's remarkable longitudinal study of an entire birth cohort in Kauai, Hawaii, followed from 1955 through midlife. The most complete empirical account of resilience across development — what protective factors moderate the effects of early adversity and what recovery looks like across the lifespan. Essential reading for anyone working with people who experienced difficult childhoods.

Accessible General Reading

★ Siegel, D. J. (2013). Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Tarcher/Penguin. An accessible account of adolescent neuroscience and development — what the brain is doing during adolescence, why the developmental mismatch between limbic and prefrontal development is adaptive rather than defective, and what parents and adolescents can do with this knowledge. Readable, accurate, and practically valuable.

McAdams, D. P. (2013). The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press. McAdams's account of the narrative identity research — how Americans tend to tell stories of redemption (contamination sequences transformed into growth and meaning), what this says about American cultural psychology, and how narrative identity connects to generativity and wellbeing. Rich in individual stories and psychologically sophisticated.